Wednesday, March 28, 2007

For the love of the story ...

As a traveler, I found myself along the roadsides of many lonely roads, physically and metaphorically. Long, dusty highways at my feet, opportunity in my hands. Placing yourself in these situations lends itself to bizarre experiences, about which I grabbed my journal and wrote.

Most of my scribblings consisted of my experiences, stories of the road. Exciting? Sure. But I never valued by experiences more than just "stuff that happened". It wasn't until I stopped traveling and chose to live in one city for more than 6 months, that I discovered that this, these stories, are part of who I am. Valuing the stories meant valuing myself.

I would tell my stories to those that asked, "So what have you been up to?" But my life was so dramatically different than theirs, my stories were lost in a glazed over eyes of abandoned attention, in which you could see the question, "Is this real?", "Is she kidding?", "How does she find the time to dooooo all this?". It was as if they were watching TV, reality TV standing before them. Drama, in it's essential form... storytelling.

But these days, people don't listen to people. Instead they listen to actors who are in movies, talkshow hosts, or players in a reality TV Show. Of course, movies and shows are often times based on reality. This they know. But to stretch the imagination and think that someone who lives the stories, might just be in front of them, talking to them. You never know who you'll meet, or what story their lives can tell.


what story does your life tell?

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